What is the internet?
The popularity and commonality of the internet has created a breeding ground for innovation, visibility, and inevitably, crime.
Where vandals no longer need to tread out into the cold but can get the same rush and create the same havoc from the comfort of their front room.
The internet today
There is no escaping the shear genius of the web, it has created a global shift, a new global market place which has and will continue to shift the balance of power.
The web gives the little man the opportunity to compete with the big guns on an almost level playing field and there is big money for brokers and search engines, who take advantage of the sheer abundance of choice to offer the consumer a summary of what’s available.
Companies are prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to entice people to their site, it has truly created the market place of the future, with fewer hurdles and where legal systems desperately try to keep up with an ever changing environment. The internet is truly an innovation to behold.
How does the internet work?
The internet/world wide web is in its relative infancy, being publicly introduced in 1990. Despite the worlds initial hesitancy, the internet has been adopted it in a big way, information is key and the internet offers information in abundance.
It's not the point of this article to explain how the internet works within an inch of the specific detail, but we feel it can often help to understand at least the basic and most common framework.
The word internet is derived from interconnected networks, each network is owned by someone and paid for by everyone, but the internet as a whole isn't owned by anyone.
If operating from a lone PC at home, you would more than likely connect through your internet service providers network (sometimes know as network service providers (NSP)).
What is an ISP
Places that there are likely to be networks suck as internet cafés or perhaps at work you would connect through the local area network (LAN) which then too would connect to an internet service provider (ISP).
There are thousands of ISPs, each operating a network of individual users and local area networks (LAN) of a variety of sizes. Each of us subscribe to an ISP and pay for the service, this is how the internet is funded.
The Internet service providers (ISPs) link to other ISPs through what is called internet exchange points (IXP or IX). The ISPs permit traffic to flow, in and out freely, without charge through the IXP gaining all revenue solely from their own customers’ subscriptions.
Everyone has to connect through someone’s network to get on to the internet, therefore all computers on the internet are indeed connected to each other through interconnected networks.
